NaNoWriMo

Starting on the 1st November and running to the 30th November it is National Novel Writing Month. The aim is, between those dates, to write a 175 page, 50,000 word novel. That’s about 1666 words a day. Or 69 words an hour.


Am I going to do it? Probably not - I am already checking the proofs for ‘M&MJ’ and slowly working my way through and editing The Penguin Variations. But do I think it’s a good idea? Most definitely.


I like writing. Anything that encourages people to write is a good thing.


The NaNoWriMo website has a really nice blog. It tells how it started from being a small thing set up by a group of friends sitting around in coffee shops, to what it is today, a charity with offices and everything.


I liked the bit where they order stationary. They order it for the whole year. The truck driver gets out, scratches his head.


“So where’s your forklift?”


That’s the kind of business I would like to run.


(I used to work in the lift industry. We were testing the emergency breaking system of the lift. We let it fall from the top of the building. The guys from the Work Authority were there. It was going to be a fine demonstration. You know the rest. The breaks don’t engage. The lift crashes in a heap at the bottom of the lift shaft.)


A writer I know is doing it. He was a winner last year and is going to do it again. He’s a good writer - you can buy his short story book here - and read his progress here. I’m looking forward to what he does.


No pressure.


Actually, there are some very fine books written at speed. The most famous is by that guy Jack Keroac (I wrote about him here). There are all kinds of stories about how he wrote ‘On the Road’ - he did it between two trips to the toilet and wrote it on a roll of toilet paper and so on and so but the best book about all that is ‘This is the Beat Generation’ by James Campbell.


Bukowski also wrote ‘Post Office’ very quickly. Mind you, it’s a very short book and he was writing what he knows. It’s about being a bum and I like bums. It’s sold millions now. That’s plenty of bum loving, isn’t it?


Ian Banks writes very quickly. He fits his novels in between bouts of extensive computer game playing, or so I read.


And of course Enid Blyton. She wrote so many hundreds of books. She could finish them while simultaneously going missing on a train in Baghdad (or was that Agatha Christie?).


And George Simenon. That Maigret. He certainly got about a bit. Mind you, he was Belgian.


I’ve got a soft spot for him as well as Blyton.


I write pretty quickly. Or I used to.


‘The Lodger’ was written, edited, printed and sent off in 3 months and that was 100,000 words. I wrote another book after that, started on the day I finished it, and that took 8 weeks.


Those were the days.


I’m much slower now. 1000 words a day and then 12 years editing.


Mind you, this blog, I’ve written it in onetwothreefourfivesix seconds. Or thereabouts.


But, who’s counting?

Sign up for the National Novel Writing Month here

Currently reading - ‘Leading the Board’ by Marc Barber

Currently listening to - ‘Overpowered’ by Roisin Murphy

Watch the trailer for Aliya Whitely’s new book ‘Light Reading’